In one of the most stunning, breath-taking examples of arrogance and denial I've ever seen, the British Bankers Association has complained to accountancy body ACCA about accusations it made to the effect that the credit crunch is all the fault of the banks.

Accountancy Age reports today that a spokesperson for the BBA said, "This is a global financial issue. It's not only the fault of banks." She then added: "Accountants were the people who audited the banks' books."

Right. So it's all the accountants' fault, then. What ACCA president Richard Aitken-Davies said was:

"The fundamental responsibilities of a corporate board appear to have been inadequately discharged. We need to ask what inhibited banks' boards from asking the right questions and understanding the risks that were being run by their managements."

Which seems fair enough.

Contrast the BBA statement with that of Financial Services Authority chief executive Hector Sants who has publicly apologised for the FSA's supervisory failures, adding that it could have done more to prevent the collapse of Northern Rock and other financial calamities. According to today's Times, Sants said:

"It is clear that a number of banks, notably those that became dependent on wholesale funding, went into the crisis with business models ill-equipped to survive a stress of this severity, and we did not do enough to minimise this, a fact that we regret."

"We should have been putting pressure on the directors to make sure they understood their business model. We are sorry that our supervision did not achieve all it should have done."

So there you have it. The regulators are to blame, the accountants are to blame, but please don't go around trying to blame the banks.